Less than one half of the MPs in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha whose attendance records are publicly available attended at least 90% of the sittings during the budget session of parliament earlier this year, a new study has found. In both houses, the largest parties – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress – averaged lower sittings in comparison to smaller parties. While in the Lok Sabha, the BJP averaged 26.46 sittings out of 31 and the Congress 23.13, in the upper house too, the ruling party averaged 84.39% attendance and the Congress 80.66%. In comparison, smaller parties performed much better. The study, conducted by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) based on attendance data published on the official websites of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, examined records of 483 Lok Sabha MPs and 255 Rajya Sabha MPs across all 31 sittings held in each house between January 28 and April 18, 2026. This included the gap for the Union budget’s mid-session recess and three additional sittings in mid-April to discuss the controversial constituency delimitation legislation. The study also notes that since the government’s top leadership, comprising the prime minister, the cabinet ministers and the presiding officers of both the houses, fall outside the ambit of attendance-tracking system used to measure rest of the parliament’s members, since none of them are required to sign the daily attendance register, provides ample opportunity for evasion of accountability.Data collection for the “Attendance Record of the Members of Parliament: Budget Session 2026” report was carried out by Aadi Sardesai, a student at Flame University and an intern at CHRI, with analysis and the report authored by CHRI Director Venkatesh Nayak. In Lok Sabha, barely a fifth had perfect attendanceThe study found that in the Lok Sabha, merely 45.76% of MPs attended between 90% and 100% of the sittings, while a lower threshold of 75% attendance was met by only 309 MPs, or 63.98% of the house. Additionally, 69 MPs were present at less than half of the sittings they were mandated to attend and only a fifth of the house, 101 out of 483 MPs, signed the register for all 31 sittings. BJP, Congress trail behind their smaller alliesA party-wise breakdown of the data shows that BJP, the largest party in Lok Sabha averaged just 26.46 sittings out of 31, a figure lower than its smaller allies such as Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)), which averaged 27.91 sittings and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which came at 27.8. The largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha, the Congress, had its average touching 23.13 sittings. Other INDIA bloc members including Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) (Shiv Sena (UBT)) (26.22 sittings), Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar) (NCP (SP)) (24.38 sittings) and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) (23.25 sittings), all had much higher attendance. The Samajwadi Party (SP), which is the second largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha however performed better with an average of 28.43 sittings out of 30. Photo: “Attendance Record of the Members of Parliament: Budget Session 2026,” CHRI. The All India Trinamool Congress (AITMC), with 28 MPs, and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), with 22 MPs, recorded the lowest attendance of any party with more than 20 members in the house, averaging 15 and 14.64 sittings respectively. By contrast, the research reveals that some of the smallest parties had the best records during the session. Both MPs of the Rashtriya Lok Dal 9RLD) and the lone representative from the Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) attended the entirety of the 31 sittings, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI (ML)) and the Zoram People’s Movement (ZPM) each averaged 30 out of 31. Rajya Sabha replicates this patternOf the 255 Rajya Sabha MPs studied, just 59 MPs, or 23.14%, attended every sitting they were required to. Further the study also found that only 46.47% achieved attendance rates between 90% and 100%. Nearly 62.33%, or 159 MPs, cleared the 75% mark, while 56 MPs – almost a quarter of those evaluated – were present at less than half of their compulsory sittings. In the Rajya Sabha like in the Lok Sabha, the largest parties underperformed in comparison to smaller ones. The BJP, with 111 MPs, averaged 84.39% attendance and the Congress about 80.66%, both trailing significantly behind Biju Janata Dal (93.28%), the Samajwadi Party (92.74%) and the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference (94.62%). The study places these parties among the house’s highest-attending parties. Photo: “Attendance Record of the Members of Parliament: Budget Session 2026,” CHRI.Among opposition parties specifically, Congress’s 80.66% stood well above the DMK, CPI and TMC, all three of which averaged below 50% in the upper house. This suggests that some of their members missed more meetings that they attended. Geography-wise attendance splitAmong state and Union Territories with more than two members in the Lok Sabha, Uttarakhand recorded the highest average attendance at 30.5 of 31 days, followed by National Capital Territory (NCT)-Delhi at 30, Rajasthan at 29.75, Himachal Pradesh at 28.75 and Uttar Pradesh at 28.69. Andhra Pradesh was the only southern state mentioned in the top ten performers, with its representatives averaging 27.41 days. Assam, on the other hand, observed the lowest attendance of any state, at 15.69 days, followed by West Bengal at 16.03, Tamil Nadu at 17.41 and Kerala at 18.74. Punjab, among north-western states, was the only one to make it to the bottom five of the list at an average of 20 days. Union territories Chandigarh and Lakshwadeep, both represented by a single MP, recorded perfect attendance, while Puducherry’s single representative failed to make it to even half of the sittings. Table 1: State/UT-wise Attendance Record (more than two MPs)#State/UTNumber of MPs in the Lok Sabha for whom attendance record is availableAttendance:State/UT-wise Average No. of Sittings1.Uttarakhand430.52.NCT-Delhi6303.Rajasthan2029.754.Himachal Pradesh428.755.Uttar Pradesh7128.696.Haryana728.437.Madhya Pradesh2428.298.Gujarat2327.919.Bihar3427.7410.Andhra Pradesh2227.4111.Chhattisgarh1026.512.Jharkhand1226.2513.Jammu & Kashmir425.7514.Odisha1925.3215.Maharashtra4323.6116.Karnataka2422.6717.Telangana1520.6718.Punjab132019.Kerala1918.7420.Tamil Nadu3917.4121.West Bengal3916.0322.Assam1315.69Source: “Attendance Record of the Members of Parliament: Budget Session 2026,” CHRI. State-wise statistics in the Rajya Sabha show a similar trajectory. NCT-Delhi region noted the highest average attendance among states with more than one MP, at 99.67%. Jammu and Kashmir came second at 95.16%, whereas, West Bengal ended at the end of the table, with its 20 MPs securing just 42.04% in attendance. Tamil Nadu was not far behind, with its 22 MPs only reaching 49.55%(function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();Source: “Attendance Record of the Members of Parliament: Budget Session 2026,” CHRI. What the numbers don’t showAs ministers and presiding officers are not required to sign the register, their absence from the data is a matter of convention rather than evidence of non-attendance. This means there is no concrete record of how often the prime minister and his cabinet were present on the floor of either house during the session. Three Lok Sabha MPs had zero attendance throughout the budget session, among whom was Amritpal Singh, an independent lawmaker from the Khadoor Sahib constituency, who is in judicial custody as an undertrial. The other two MPs were Chandrakant Raghunath Patil, a BJP MP from Gujarat, and Radhakrishna, a Congress MP from Karnataka. In the Rajya Sabha, six MPs recorded zero attendance, even though all of them had either been recently elected or reelected only in April and were required to attend just three meetings. Three of the six MPs with zero attendance belonged to AITMC: Rukmini Mallik, Babul Supriya Baral and Rajeev Kumar. The other three MPs were Biswajit Sinha from BJP, Nitish Kumar from Janata Dal (United) and Anbumani Ramadoss from Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK). The study also highlights a disclosure gap between the two houses. While the Rajya Sabha’s website explicitly states reasons for absences, such as illness or “prior committed engagements,” the Lok Sabha publishes no such explanations, a practice that CHRI recommends its secretariat to adopt. The study also emphasises a long abandoned parliamentary procedure, wherein houses maintained hourly attendance charts, religiously tracking how many MPs were physically present on the floor through the course of a sitting. The practice was discontinued after the introduction of live telecast and online attendance records. The study calls for its resumption, arguing that a once-a-day signature, particularly when the top brass is exempted from it, only captures a fragment of what “attendance” ought to mean for a legislature whose costs are borne by taxpayers.